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Hawks knows that villains are supposed to be… well, villainous. He knows that they are evil, and dramatic, and unhinged. Yadda yadda. But he can’t help but wish that they would operate on a more reasonable schedule.
Jesus, did they never sleep?
Personally, twenty-seven hours (and at least three Red Bulls) into his patrol, Hawks is about ready to completely give up on the Commission and ignore his (obsessive, perhaps slightly unhealthy) need to save every civilian he comes across in the interest of moving to America and living out the rest of his days as some kind of (what do they even do in America? Wax poetic about patriotism? Argue? Eat hamburgers?) reclusive potato farmer.
(He knows, rationally, that loss is unavoidable. No one hero can predict and prevent all buildings’ structural weaknesses, or every stupid kid that decides to chase a fucking dog straight into the goddamn street as Hawks is fighting for his life. But he can’t help himself from tallying each death, from keeping anniversaries. Although the Commission hates it, he attends every funeral. He keeps a private calendar, full of reminders of his failures.)
Today alone, Hawks has gotten chewed out by his handlers over comms on two separate occasions for “failing to perform adequately in post-battle interviews.” It’s a new low for him. He prides himself on his ability to put on a brave face for the camera—after all, he’s been training for it all his life. The last couple of months, however, have proved an ultimate test of his capabilities. As meetings with Dabi and the League have increased in frequency, the Commission has ramped up his patrol hours in a effort to maintain his public image, and reduce any future suspicion (in the case that someone accidentally witnesses him doing something… unsavory). The problem is that, while it’s all well and good to up his hours in the interest of an alibi, the fact remains that Hawks is actually spending a fairly significant amount of time running “unsavory” errands for Dabi. He’s not sure when the last time he crashed at his Commission-approved studio was, but it must have been at least a couple days before, because he can distinctly remember helping Dabi interrogate a low-level government official (about… prison patrol schedules? The details are fuzzy), kill him, and then hide the body. Now, the man's disappearance has made headlines, and Hawks hasn’t even gotten to wash the blood off his feathers.
(When he gets home, he’ll treat the man’s death like he does any other civilian casualty. Donate to his family. Attend the funeral. Mark him on the calendar. The Commission said the man’s death had been “for the greater good” when they gave Hawks the okay to slit his throat. Hawks tries to believe them. He has to, to do the things Dabi asks him to; the things the Commission signs off on, time and time again, for “the sake of the mission.” Each time, he shows no sign of guilt, no sign of the regret he know he should be feeling. These days, he mostly just feels numb.)
Dabi, he thinks, can tell (Dabi watches him sometimes with a look in his eyes Hawks can’t quite decipher. In these moments. Hawks wonders whether Dabi believes him at all).
The Commission, of course, can’t. He’s not sure what that says about his handlers, who have known him for upwards of a decade, that they can no longer see through the mask they forced him to build. Maybe, Hawks thinks, they just don’t care to try.
…
After what might possibly have been the longest patrol of his life, and a couple of encounters with the same villain that led to a messy arrest, Hawks can barely see straight. He flies down and somewhat clumsily lands at the doors to HPSC headquarters. All he has to do is fill out his reports—one on the patrol, another on the encounter and arrest, and then he’s home free. Hawks can practically hear his bed from across the city, calling him to rest.
Strolling into the Commission in an attempt to seem jovial and relaxed, rather than exhausted, Hawks is immediately met with a tense atmosphere. Even on a good day, the sterile, yellow-white walls and too-bright lighting provide a heavy contrast with the dark, underhanded power structure and barely legal activity Hawks knows is housed within these walls. Today, though, Hawks gets the sense something is especially off. It doesn’t usually feel so… wary, like something bad is about to happen.
Hawks feels a firm grip on his shoulder. Red nails.
Something bad has already happened.
…
Hawks has two handlers. The first, Haruki Ren, is an intimidatingly strong, but relatively level-headed former mercenary who manages Hawks’s day-to-day assignments as a hero. All of Hawk’s reports and post-encounter paperwork (God, Hawks hates paperwork. Whoever invented the Commission’s overly complex filing system should be sued for psychological damages) are reviewed by him. He also handles all of Hawks’s “personal maintenance activities ,” or what Hawks likes to call, “let’s make sure Hawks still knows how to be a person, and not a bird” training.
Hawks hates him. He can’t help but wonder how such a freakishly regulation-obsessed guy managed to be a successful mercenary in the first place. Hadn’t he known it was illegal? Hawks knows that Haruki probably owes the Commission his life for wiping his record and allowing him to work as a Commission employee (his quirk, which allows him to sense irregularities—in paperwork, in behavior—was too valuable for the Commission to ignore), but it’s not going to kill anyone if Hawks forgets to describe a villain’s costume on the confrontation report form, or smile after he’s asked a question in an interview. Hawks has the sneaking suspicion Haruki’s quirk may be slowly driving him insane.
Today, however, Hawks isn’t dealing with Haruki.
The grip on his shoulder steers him away from the Commission’s main lobby, where Hawks usually sits in a highly uncomfortable chair and makes reports over a cup of bitter, watery coffee, and towards an office he is horribly, intimately familiar with.
The plaque on the door reads,
“Nakamura Aiko,
Heroic Maintenance and Supervision”
and although the door itself looks solid, Hawks knows that whoever sits in that office can see over the desks of nearly every Commission employee on the floor.
Hawks allows his expression to fall back into a practiced neutrality, and as Nakamura opens the door, he asks lightly, “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
Nakamura’s office is modern, sleek, and impersonal, with very few signs that it is actually in use. It contains a desk and chair, a couple of metal bookshelves, and strangely, a single, very overstuffed couch. The walls appear to be holographic: solid one moment, and clear the next, as if they can’t decide whether or not to allow a view of the cubicles outside. From the outside, the walls are always solid, and Hawks had marveled at the contrast when, at eight years old, he had stepped foot into this office for the first time. Growing up the way he did, in a dingy, one-bedroom apartment filled with empty beer bottles, old takeout containers, and the occasional cockroach, he hadn’t thought that technology like this really existed.
Now, there’s a small part of him that wished it didn’t. He doesn’t like the underlying message that entering the office sends; that its resident is always watching those around her, waiting for any sign of a mistake.
Nakamura releases his shoulder and gestures towards the couch, and Hawks’s stomach drops. “Sit down,” she purrs, a calculated look in her eye that makes him feel eight again. “I have some… questions, for you.” Her red nails clack against her desk.
Hawks feels his wings flutter uncomfortably, and tries to keep his expression under control. The last time Nakamura used her quirk, Truth or Dare, on him, it was because he had secretly been keeping a freezer of raw meat to supplement his diet (he’s never been quite sure why the Commission insists he has to cook all his meat. It’s not as though he’s eating it in public or anything, and if he was to go too long without the increased iron content of raw meat, the Commission would have bigger problems than the vestigial bird traits of their Number Two Hero). After lying to her about his apartment’s contents (Truth), she had forced him to agree to never purchase raw meat without the intention of cooking it (Dare). Now, he has to pay Rumi to make “mystery grocery runs,” so that he’s not the one knowingly purchasing the raw meat. Unfortunately for Hawks, she doesn’t always stick to a reasonable diet. The last time she went, she’d used some of the meat money to buy him a pink, sparkly dildo (“What? You don’t want my meat?” Suave, Rumi). He’d had to bury it so that the Commission’s cleaners didn’t ask any uncomfortable questions.
Hawks digresses.
He sits. Nakamura, who clearly has no intention of doing the same, looks him in the eye and asks, “Did you know about the break-in last night?”
Hawks startles. Out of all the things he was worried she had caught him doing, the idea that she was going to accuse him of something he hadn’t done hadn’t really crossed his radar. “What break-in?” he asks, forgetting himself for a moment.
“Answer the question, Hawks,” Nakamura says dangerously.
“No, no!” Hawks raises his hands placatingly. “Hey, I’ve been on patrol for, like,” he pauses, not actually sure how long he’d been patrolling. “More than a day, at least. You know where I was last night.”
Nakamura glares, clearly choosing to ignore the perceived jab at his schedule. “We are aware,” she says slowly, “that you did not participate in last night’s break in. We have good reason to believe, however, that it was perpetrated by a member of the League of Villains. Did you have any reason to believe, from your contact with the League, that they were planning to steal files from HPSC storage?”
“Of course not,” Hawks says, with a false calm in his voice. “Obviously, that’s the kind of important information that would have made it into my reports.” And because Hawks is curious, and slightly masochistic, he adds, “Which member? What files did they take?”
Nakamura sniffs. “We aren’t sure yet. They left the file room in such disarray that our administration won’t be able to complete a full catalogue for another twelve or so hours. There are a couple miscellaneous files missing, but they don’t contain recent or relevant information, so we believe they may have been taken as a diversion.”
She narrows her eyes, “It is curious, however, that you were not informed of their intent to carry out such a heist. Do you know why they might not have told you, or asked for your assistance?”
Hawks thinks carefully, knowing he has to answer truthfully, but not wanting to admit that, actually, he’s not sure the League trusts him as fully as he’s led the Commission to believe. “The League,” he explains slowly, “is more like an alliance of individual perpetrators than a collective body. They act together during large-scale assaults, but also commit smaller crimes under their own names. My guess is that this is a single member, perhaps acting on their own personal agenda, rather than for the good of the League.”
He’s not sure he believes this himself—if he’s being honest, the League doesn’t feel like just an ‘alliance.’ Sometimes he finds himself being drawn into their surprisingly casual dynamic in a way he’s never fit anywhere else. They’re almost like… friends.
Nakmura’s quirk, however, remained inactive, so he must have believed in his own words well enough.
He tries not to think about it.
“Are you saying,” she repeats, and Hawks is drawn back from his thoughts as he feels the room grow more tense, “that you are not fully informed on all League members’ activities, as you have led us to believe?”
Shit. He’s backed himself into a corner. “I’m informed,” he grits his teeth, “on the plans of the League. If Toga wants to fucking murder someone just because, that’s not really League business.”
“Your business,” Nakamura croons, deceptively casual, “is to prevent unnecessary casualties.You are a hero, Hawks. What happened to saving lives?”
Hypocrites.
“What happened!?” Hawks yells, finally losing his temper. “What about the man I had to kill yesterday? Was his death necessary?” His voice breaks on the last word. At the look on her face, his anger flares.
Her nails clack dangerously.
Hawks breathes for a moment, and then schools his expression into something she would consider ‘more professional.’
“Fully,” Nakamura replies smoothly. “From now on, please include as much information as you can uncover on individual member activities in your reports. You may go.”
Hawks seethes as the dismissal, but does as he’s told. He knows that Nakamura enjoys trying to get under his skin. She’s right, he tells himself. If the man hadn’t died, Hawks would have lost his in with the League, and many more future lives would have been lost. Sacrifice the one for the many. She’s right. She’s right.
Having to include individual activity in his reports, however, is sufficiently irritating. It will mean writing his observations of everything that goes down at the League house, from Twice’s mental fluctuations, to Toga’s daily blood consumption (and where she gets it from). It’s a lot more work for him. And, says a tiny voice at the back of his mind, feels a bit like an invasion of their privacy.
Hawks isn’t an idiot. He knows the Commission is a little behind where they should be on quirk discrimination policy. If spending so much time in close quarters with the League has taught him anything, it’s that hero society has a long way to go before it can consider itself accommodating to all quirks. If Toga had had a way to source blood legally, maybe her parents wouldn’t have kicked her out for draining animals. Telling the Commission about the lengths some League members have to go to in order to take care of their quirks feels like it will only confirm what the Commission already believes about some quirks being more villainous than others. Hawks wishes things could be different for the League members, of course, but he’s a hero. He doesn’t believe in the lengths the League is willing to go to in order to secure that future.
Don’t you, though? the voice says. What’s the difference between killing for the League’s goals, and killing for the Commission?
Hawks ignores the voice. He walks out the front doors, knowing Nakamura is watching. Trying not to appear as desperate to escape as he feels, he takes off towards his apartment.
…
When Hawks wakes up, it’s the middle of the night.
He’s not sure why, exactly, but something seems off. He blinks, and carefully deploys several feathers to poke around the room a bit.
Swish. Kitchen’s fine, nothing’s in the bathroom.
Swish. Couch, cheap-ass tv, clear.
Swish. One of his feathers lights on fire.
Hawks jumps and swears. Dabi is sitting near his bed, fucking watching him sleep like some kind of creepy vampire. “Jesus, Dabi!” Hawks groans. “What the hell…” Why Dabi has to go out of his way to contact him in the dead of night, Hawks will never know. The man seems to thrive off of seeming as mysterious and unpredictable as possible, and Hawks can’t help but—
—suddenly, he realizes something. “Dabi,” he asks slowly, heart racing, “how are you here?”
“Took the elevator, pretty bird.” Dabi hums thoughtfully. “Gotta’ be honest, your apartment is pretty shit. Never woulda’ thought the Number Two’d be here all holed up in a backwater studio. And what’s with all this furniture? Looks like it’s never been used.” Dabi grins. His face flickers menacingly by the light of the flame he’s holding. Hawks rolls his eyes, and flicks on a table lamp.
“No…” Hawks says, ignoring the jab on his apartment. It was the Commission’s apartment, really, not his. He doesn’t even really like being here—he’d much rather crash with Rumi, whose apartment feels less like a tiny museum, and more like an actual home. “Dabi, how do you know where I live?”
Hawks had always been extremely careful not to let the League follow him home. He took a different route back from headquarters every time he came back from patrol, and when he left League meetings, he went back to a dummy apartment the Commission had set up for him ages ago. He wore civilian clothes in the complex, and never entered or left the apartment through the front doors (he always left his balcony doors unlocked for quick landings). Hawks knew that there was no way members of the League could know his address—that was one of the conditions of his acceptance of the mission, that his apartment would be secret. (He had needed something separate, a place where he didn’t have to worry about Dabi, or the League, or the fact that he was actually started to feel quite unworried around those former two things—more so than anywhere else, it seemed).
Dabi’s smirk lessened slightly. He held up a single manilla folder, and said “I have some questions for you, Keigo Takami.”
…
Dabi is fucking pissed.
First of all, a cursory glance at Hawks’s file tells him that yes, Hawks is in fact a double agent for the HPSC. Disappointing, but expected. He had almost burned the file without reading further—he had gotten what he’d came for, after all—and gone straight to the address listed under ‘Residency’ to kill Hawks.
But something stopped him from burning it right away. Maybe it was luck. Maybe Dabi was curious and bored. Or maybe it was the fact that Dabi has been watching Hawks—sees the way he presents himself so carefully, how he schools his emotions, how he flinches at questions about his past. How Dabi has never seen him look happier than when he’s with the League, not working on business, but just. being. How, even if only for a second, Dabi can sometimes see part of himself in Hawks—the part that he thought had died, burned, when he was fourteen.
He wasn’t concerned, per say. Just a little… intrigued. Yes, that was it.
So Dabi reopened the file, and read. Read of a boy who was raised by the government as a child soldier. Raised to forget his own name, live for his job, and do unspeakable, horrible things just because they told him he must. Trained for years; mutilated, manipulated, and tortured in punishment, all in the name of being a perfect hero. And Dabi saw an opportunity.
(The tiny part of Dabi that was still Touya saw himself.)
He had originally given Hawks a chance, he reasons, despite the immeasurable odds against his success, because, yeah, even he can admit that it would be really nice to have the Number Two Hero on their side. And the contents of this file… they aren’t pretty. The things Hawks has said to gain their trust; things about heroes, about society, and discrimination, can’t have been total lies, not after he lived through the complete and utter bullshit Dabi just read about. (It was so clinical, in the file. So cold, and removed. Dabi wants to scream at whoever wrote it. That was a child.)
So instead of killing Hawks (which, a tiny part of him whispers, you didn’t really want to do anyways), he decides he’s going to make him an offer.
…
Hawks is going to die.
There’s a feather at Dabi’s throat, and seven more pointing towards various weak spots in his anatomy, but Hawks knows it’s futile. He can’t kill Dabi, not anymore, and Dabi could turn his feathers to ashes before Hawks could strike through him, anyhow.
He is seething, but it’s barely hiding his terror. “Don’t call me that,“ he growls, and then, realizing what Dabi’s possession of his file must mean, frantically asks, “Did you break into the fucking Commission Headquarters to get that file? By yourself? What the hell were you thinking, Dabi? You could have—no, should have—been killed!” He’s not sure why it feels so important to say. Dabi is dangerous, but he’s equally as reckless. Someday, Hawks knows, he will pull a heist that’s just too big, or start a fight he can’t win. Hawks can tell that there’s something keeping him around, driving him, but he’s still too careless with his life.
“Why the fuck should you care, double agent?” Dabi snaps back. “Give me one good reason not raze this whole fucking building with us both in it.” He looks a little crazed, but his words give Hawks pause.
Why hasn’t Dabi killed him yet? Why the confrontation at his home, late at night? He wants something, Hawks realizes.
“Why are you here, Dabi?” Hawks asks, ignoring Dabi’s command.
Dabi’s face betrays nothing, but as he speaks, Hawks can hear a strange note in his voice. “Have you read this file?” he asks slowly.
“Of course not,” Hawks replies, a little confused. “It’s, like, four times more classified than what I’ve got clearance for.” Somewhere, in the back of his mind, he notes the absurdity of not having clearance to read his own file. It’s not as though he doesn’t know what’s in it, he reasons to himself. The Commission has their reasons.
To Hawks’s surprise, Dabi casually tosses him the file, as if it doesn’t contain extremely classified information about the Commission’s Child Heroics Project, or, more relevantly, the damming evidence of his betrayal. (When had he started thinking of it as betrayal? He was doing his job, goddammit).
“Read it.” Dabi says shortly.
Feeling a bit as though he’s at the villain’s mercy, Hawks does.
The first sheet in the file contains basic information, like his name, quirk, and address. After that, it appears to be split into four sections. Acquisition. Training. Medical. Heroic Work. Hawks knows that, if he were to flip to Heroic Work, the first few pages would probably outline every little thing he’d done as a double agent for the Commission. He doesn’t want to read it, to see, laid out in writing, the lengths he’d gone to to fuck over the League.
The other three, though, seem harmless enough. He skims through them.
Acquisition. Basic details of his history with CPS, the system, and his eventual removal from his family. A ‘ward of the Commission,’ his file says (he skips the part where they note how they paid off his old man. Hawks doesn’t want to know how little that amount would have been—the amount his father was given to convince him to give up his only child). Fine. Nothing that would concern the League there, obviously.
Training. This section is a lot thicker. Information on the handlers he’s gone through over the years, on the training exercises he was required to complete (forced to undergo, whispers the little voice) to hit the Commission’s goals for his progress. (He doesn’t like to think about the early years, before he got his license, and his rank, and his apartment. Day in, day out in that horrible white room, leaving only for training (and punishment). No one to talk to. He spent most nights trying not to fall asleep, because he dreamed, and his handlers hated when he cried. Training felt like a relief, most days, though his handlers were… demanding. While training, he wasn’t alone.)
Medical. This section is even thicker than the last, but most of the papers contain a lot of jargon that even Hawks, as experienced as he is with Commission doctors, struggles to understand. He gets the gist, though. Surgeries. Removing his talons, reshaping his strange, bird-like feet. Removing any evidence of his failures in training, or on the field (Hawks’s skin, despite all he’s gone through, is fairly unblemished. He supposes he has the Commission’s medical team to thank). He doesn’t remember all of them, but he does remember how excited he was, every time he was called in for one. The days he spent in recovery were reserved for behavioral training only, and it felt good to have a break from the Commission’s endless combat drills.
After a few minutes of skimming through the sections, Hawks looks up. Dabi is watching him, looking… slightly upset? Hawks isn’t sure he’s ever seen him display an emotion that isn’t cold derision, or cruel joy at getting what he wants.
(There was once, at the League house, where Hawks saw Dabi watching Toga try and braid her own hair. After a few minutes of watching Toga struggle, Dabi came over and silently starting doing it for her. Even Toga, normally so quick to tease him, was quiet. She looked at Hawks, and then quickly looked away. Hawks had seen tears in her eyes. Even then, Dabi’s face was impassive.)
(Hawks wonders if, in another life, Dabi had a sister.)
“What?” Hawks asks, careful to make his voice sound even. He’s not particularly fond of the idea that Dabi, of all people, has read this file, but he supposes it can’t be helped now.
Dabi’s face goes back to looking vaguely bored. “Listen, pretty bird. If you ain’t seein’ any problems with what you just read, I’m not about to tell you.”
“Dabi,” Hawks begins, feeling more confused than ever. “I lived this file. I know what it says. If you’re going to kill me, I’d prefer to skip the bedtime reading.”
A stray spark flies off Dabi’s fingertips and fizzes out midair. “That ‘bedtime reading’,” Dabi says dangerously, “is the most fucked-up shit I have ever heard.” Then, almost to himself. “What is wrong with you?” He stands up and begins pacing, a couple more tiny sparks meeting their end in the stale air of Hawks’s apartment. “How,” he asks, “are you still a hero, after what they did to you?”
“If I can save someone,” Hawks says slowly, “I have to try.”
“The Commission was wrong!” Dabi growls. “They took you,” he starts, and all of a sudden, he sounds angrier than Hawks has ever heard him before. “They bought you, and they raised you as a child soldier to fight in their stupid fucking war. You were fucking tortured! Why can’t you see that? They ‘trained’ you until you passed out, and then they stuck you in solitary confinement! And you’re still fucking doing their dirty work.”
“I am a hero!” Hawks shouts, “and it doesn’t matter how they made me!” But even as he says it, he knows it’s not true. He’s arrested villains for much less than what the Commission did to him. “I don’t care how they made me,” he says more quietly, and his voice breaks a little, “as long as I can save people.”
He looks at Dabi. Dabi’s face has gone even paler than usual. If Hawks didn’t know better, he’d swear Dabi looked almost concerned.
“And who’s going to save you, pretty bird?” Dabi asks softly.
“I don’t need saving,” Hawks replies automatically. “I’m a hero.”
He’s crying, a little. Dabi walks over to the edge of the bed where Hawks is sitting, and sits down next to him. They aren’t quite touching, but it’s a near thing. Hawks can feel Dabi making the air around them both warmer, and subconsciously relaxes slightly. His primary feather remains sharp against Dabi’s neck. The others have long since fallen to the ground, forgotten.
“Bullshit,” Dabi laughs dryly. He pauses, perhaps considering his next words, and then says, “Let us help you.”
“What?” Hawks asks. He’s still kind of processing that Dabi is… comforting him? He’s not sure what else to call the heat surrounding him like a warm blanket, making him realize how tired he still is.
God. He’s always so fucking tired.
“Let us help you,” Dabi repeats, more firmly this time. “Keep working for the Commission, but on our side, this time. We won’t ask you to kill anyone. Just feed us information about Commission activities.”
Hawks narrows his eyes, unable to really process the offer. He hears himself ask, “What do you need that info for?”
Dabi smirks, and Hawks is suddenly reminded that he’s currently speaking to one of Japan’s most wanted villains. He feels a shiver at Dabi’s next words.
“For what they did to you, pretty bird?” he drawls. “We are going to make the Commission burn.”
The last feather drifts to the ground.
…
Later, when Dabi returns to the League, he gives them the file, minus a few specific documents. Compress reads it with his mask on, but Dabi watches a tear make its way down his neck. Twice laughs, and then cries (Toga has to spend the rest of the day comforting him). Spinner makes it to Medical, then throws up (“They took his talons?”).
Shigaraki says nothing. When Dabi tells him about his plan to take down the Commission, and Hawks’s role in it, he approves it with an awful smile.
Dabi doesn’t ever plan to tell them that Hawks was, until last night, spying on them for the Commission. As far as he’s concerned, the important bits of the file are all there.
He burns the pages that prove Hawks’s betrayal, and mails him their ashes.
Later, with lawyers, and testimonies, and proof, they burn the Commission together.